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Google Scripts and Apps add impressive functionality

About a month ago I read of a new Google Doc's feature for Spreadsheets - Scripts.   Here is the Google help Blog overview of these powerful services, including one that automates sending a personalized email from a Google Spreadsheet.

The Google Apps Marketplace provides independently created software that uses the Google API's.  There are some great little services and many are free to small users.   I liked this simple scheduling app called Doodle at www.doodle.com but there are many more.

Handy tools when printing website articles, etc

I got this from daily blog at www.makeuseof.com - it is a handy link that reformats a busy web-page to eliminate some if the annoying formatting that often prevents a nice "clean" printed look.  It is called "Readability" and they recommend that you just place it as a "link" in the toolbar menu - and whenever you want to "print" a web article, just click on the link and "Readibility" will reformat the text on that page.  You don't have to use it in every case - but it made alot of pages look better when printed to PDF for me.  Here is an example of "before" (top) and "after" (bottom).  Sorry for the gory topic.

Barcode Generator

I sometimes find an interesting software app or online service that I think deserves attention, and this online service is one such case - the Online Barcode Generator which allows anyone to quickly generate a barcode image for download according to many variables - barcode protocol, type, size, and orientation.

If you wish to find some FREE barcode fonts I recommend this website with a detailed explanation how the various codes are derived and some background/history on them (along with MSExcel and OpenOffice spreadsheets with conversion macros) .

Computer & Laptop Security

I recently found this blog post detailing how a well known Canadian security program Computrace (created by Vancouver security group Absolute Software) describes how it could be turned against the owner. Here is Absolute's response.

Irregardless of the likelyhood of such a security breech (the point being that if someone steals your laptop and it has something worth stealing, they have alot of ways to discover them and can be sucessful) it only points to another obvious reason to develop security measures for PC use, including data drive encryption (which I can not stress enough) via open source programs like TrueCrypt. (Again, which I personally use and totally endorse!)

I hope these links help.

Backup Madness

Ok, I do this alot. But with all the o/s upgrades and reinstalls I now have a mass of DC's and DVD's from previous efforts. Having used Backup software in the past (like the recently deposed Microsoft OneCare) I am now finding it a pain that I must reinstall the backup program to Restore! So I am looking for a new app that can "migrate" with me a little easier.

In the meantime I have decided to just use WinZip v12.1 - it can compress files as it Archives and I just write the password on the CD/DVD and store in a secure location. That is the simplest way for now. (plus I have been using WinZip forever so I don't have to keep learning it! Although I find I have to upgrade occasionally.)

However, in my "search" one program I really liked was Gmail BACKUP. I am running it now. It is true that one of the things that has bothered me about Gmail is I may never be able to leave the service as it holds EVERYTHING (and is becoming MORE ubiquitous) so this is a real find!

[here is MakeUseOf's summary]